


Happy Birthday, Mr. Weasley!

by mad_martha



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Carnivorous Plants, Gen, Humour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-28
Updated: 2011-08-28
Packaged: 2017-10-23 04:41:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/246367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mad_martha/pseuds/mad_martha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry has something special for Ron.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy Birthday, Mr. Weasley!

**Author's Note:**

> There's one line in here that I owe to Hotlips Hoolihan of _M*A*S*H_ \- I have no idea who else to credit for it!

The bell over the door let out its usual scream and Harry patiently waited, holding it open for a stream of pre-adolescents who tore out of it as though they had a manticore behind them.

Which wasn't entirely inaccurate - Ron was half a dozen paces behind them, brandishing a long, flat-headed brush.

"Don't come back, you little sods!" he roared, and Harry let the door swing shut behind them, raising a questioning brow at his friend.

"What did they do?"

Ron grounded the broom and leaned on the handle, red-faced and indignant. "They let a dozen Chameleon Mice out of their cage! I managed to catch five of 'em with a charm, but Merlin knows where the rest have got to. Damn things blend into the background and they can eat their weight in sweets in an hour - we'll have 'em levitating and swelling all over the shop if they get into the Balloon Gum."

Interesting visual image. Harry cocked his head at Ron. "Don't you have a cat to keep the rodents down?"

"Yeah, but it's useless," Ron said sourly. "Never thought I'd wish for Crookshanks back, but at least he had a brain and could be arsed to try and catch stuff. I haven't seen a whisker of our mangy old fleabag for a week."

"Maybe something's happened to it," Harry suggested, amused.

"Yeah, probably. Not like it was all that bright, eh? Come to think of it, the Carnivorous Cabbages have been looking a bit smug - maybe they ate it. Either that, or they've been snarfing the Pygmy Puffs, and I'm not too fussed which, to be honest."

"Won't George have something to say if they've been eating the merchandise?"

"That's his look-out," Ron said sourly. "One of the Cabbages tried to take a chunk out of _me_ yesterday - you should see the bite on my arse!"

"No thanks!" Harry said, grinning. "What did you do to it?"

A reflection of his grin appeared on Ron's face. "Stir-fried it with some pork and noodles. It wasn't half bad."

Harry shouted with laughter, and Ron grinned reluctantly.

"So," he said, "what can I do for you today, Auror Potter? Do you need some Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder for a covert operation, or is it just a refill of Fart Flakes for use on a pain-in-the-arse workmate?"

"Neither. I thought I'd just drop by and see my old mate on his birthday."

"Aren't we a bit old for birthdays?" Ron asked unconvincingly, as he led the way to the front of the shop and the till.

"We're twenty-three," Harry pointed out. "Well, you are anyway. I'll stop remembering when you're sixty, okay? And what's the problem with your birthday anyway? Your mum's got a party all sorted for tonight, and I know Hermione's planning something too."

"Yeah, great," Ron muttered. He ducked behind the till to put the brush away, and leaned on the counter, looking morose. For a moment or two the shop was empty of anyone but them and Harry could hear various objects whistling, humming, whirring and peeping to themselves. Something that blended suspiciously well with the background scuttled behind a row of jars filled with sweets on a nearby shelf, and one of the Carnivorous Cabbages yawned noisily in its pot in the corner.

"Where's George?" Harry asked curiously.

"Buggered if I know. He's got me to look after the shop, hasn't he? He's off somewhere with backers or clients or something - calls it _shmoozing_."

"I thought he spent a lot of his time developing new jokes?"

"Nah, that's just his hobby, something he does in the evening," Ron said dryly. "The day job is selling it all - I sell it to the people who walk in off the street, wanting small stuff, and he reckons he sells it to the big customers, other shops."

"And does he?" Harry asked.

"No idea. I'm not 'management', am I?"

George was an arse, Harry decided. But the twins had always put Ron down and apparently losing Fred hadn't changed his brother much. He was now an arse for both of them.

The bell screamed again and several people entered the shop, one of them a large middle-aged witch who made a beeline for Ron. Harry faded into the background against some shelves, to wait for her to be done. It seemed unlikely that she would be leaving any time soon, however, as she had numerous complaints to make about the jokes and tricks her offspring had purchased from the shop. She wanted compensation for the damage some of them had done to her home. In vain did Ron politely repeat, over and over, that jokes were purchased at the buyer's own risk, that the shop was not responsible for the actions of people's children while they were in the shop, that every item in the shop carried warnings about possible side-effects including explosions, leakages and swellings, and that returns could not be accepted on used products nor compensation provided if the products were accidentally or recklessly misused.

After considerable back and forth with him, the witch demanded to see the manager. As her actual wording of this demand was _I want to speak to the organ-grinder, not the monkey,_ Ron's ears turned a bright red and Harry bristled with indignation on his friend's behalf.

"I'm the only member of staff in the shop today," Ron told her grimly. "The owner's probably back tomorrow if you want to come back."

Her decision to lean over the counter and start punctuating her repeated demands with a stabbing finger coincided with a crash somewhere at the back of the shop, followed by a very odd howling noise and smothered adolescent sniggers.

"Oy!" Ron bellowed, taking a moment to turn away from the witch and peer down one of the aisles. "If I find you lot have been messing about in the Adult Products section, you'll be leaving here with Glitter-Bang Hexes to your backsides, you hear me?"

The witch seemed to swell with indignation. "Young man, I demand that you attend to me this minute and _fetch the manager!_ "

"I told you, I'm the only one here today!" Ron said, very harassed.

The kids at the other end of the shop presumably believed themselves safe for the time being, for there was another series of muffled noises and a brief spurt of discordant music. Harry thought he smelled smoke.

Annoyed that Ron was left to deal with this kind of crap on his own every day, he was just about to go and give the kids the fright of their lives, when the witch made the ill-judged decision to grab the front of Ron's apron. To hell with that ...

Harry stepped out of the shadows by the shelving and took her wrist in a firm grip, a hold the Aurors had taught him which provided nothing but a warning - unless the person continued to be difficult, in which case his thumb and middle finger were ideally placed to exert pressure on two very sensitive spots on the joint.

"I believe my friend told you the owner will be in tomorrow if you want to continue this discussion," he said mildly. The witch turned furious eyes on him - and paused, seeing the scar and spectacles. "That would be my friend _the war hero_ ," Harry added with gentle emphasis.

She turned a rather odd colour and released Ron at once. "I - ah - "

"I'm sure he'd be glad to provide you with the owner's business card, so you can owl your complaints directly to him."

Ron fished an incredibly ugly fluorescing square of card out from the shelf under the till and mutely passed it over; Harry handed it to her with his free hand and released her pointedly. The witch sniffed, tossed her head, and stalked out of the shop with as much dignity as she could muster.

"Thanks," Ron said, but before he could say anything else there was another crash from the end of the shop. "Bugger it!"

He took off at a run. Guessing what was about to happen, Harry sauntered to the door instead and parked himself across it, waiting.

"I thought I told you little gits not to come back!"

There was a sudden scuffle, the _zinging_ sound of a couple of hexes, and a group of four teenaged boys came flying around a different corner, shouting with laughter - only to run smack into the lounging Auror who blocked their escape.

Harry gave them an unamused look. "Whatever you've nicked, put it back," he ordered. "And if you've damaged anything, you can pay for it."

Groans and indignant protests. One of them, bigger and cockier than the others, decided to try his luck.

"Look, the owner is a friend of my dad - "

"I don't care if he's the Minister of Magic - who, incidentally, is a friend of _mine_ ," Harry said. The boy looked rather disbelieving but some of the fight went out of him nevertheless. "How stupid do you think I am? I've known George Weasley since we were kids. If you think he'd let even a friend's son get away with theft and criminal damage in his shop, you must have bats in your attic. Now - if you don't want me to Stun the lot of you, cart you to the Auror lock-up and call your parents, you'll hand over everything you pinched and sort out the mess you made. Any arguments?"

There were certainly a few futile complaints, but twenty minutes later the four of them were leaving the shop in a decidedly chastened frame of mind.

"Not that it'll do a bit of good in the long run," Ron commented, resigned. "They'll have decided it was all a good joke by the time they get home - if they don't decide to get Mummy and Daddy to complain about our cruel treatment of them. Still, thanks mate."

"Not a problem. I don't suppose George is all that impressed by complaints anyway."

"Depends on how much business he thinks he's losing," Ron said sourly.

Harry decided it was time to cheer him up a little. "When are you closing? Can't you quit a bit early tonight, since it's your birthday?"

"I could, I reckon. It's not like we're all that busy today." Ron hesitated for a moment, then nodded and began to untie his apron. "Yeah, let's do it. Shove the 'Closed' sign over for me, will you?"

"I'll take you for a drink to celebrate," Harry told him with a grin.

The look Ron gave him was a little jaundiced. "Celebrate what? Another year older and twice the loser? I can't even deal with a bunch of school kids without my mate the Auror's help!"

"You can't be in two places at once," Harry pointed out, "not without a Time-Turner, anyway. You've got have someone else there to block the exit while you flush them out."

"Yeah, right," Ron sighed. "That's Auror Manual stuff I suppose. Let me just grab my cloak."

"Actually I thought we could celebrate _this_ ," Harry said, taking something out of a pocket inside his robe.

Ron stopped and turned, frowning. Harry was holding up a parchment envelope with the MLE official seal on it.

"I asked Kingsley to let me give it to you," he said, grinning. "Happy birthday, mate!"

"Oh, what ..." Ron grabbed the envelope and ripped it open, his ears turning pink. Then he let out a whoop of triumph, tossed it into the air and seized Harry, lifting him clean off the ground and swinging him around. "YES! I'm going to be an Auror! They accepted me!"

"Oy!" Harry shouted with laughter. "Give it a rest - you can't twirl an Auror!"

"Twirl you? I could _kiss_ you!"

"Try it and I'll set Ginny on you!"

Ron laughed, setting him back on his feet. "Yeah, right - she's more likely to criticise my technique!"

Harry snorted. "So - _now_ will you celebrate, you miserable git?"

"Damn right I will! And I'll start …" Ron paused, ducked behind the counter and rummaged until he found a quill and a scrap of parchment. "I'll start by writing my resignation -

 _"Dear George, I quit. The keys to the shop are on the hook in Mum's pantry, your mates' thieving brats are in the Auror lock-up, and the cat's inside the cabbages. Love, Ron. P.S. You still owe me a month's wages, you tight git."_

Harry laughed.


End file.
